We think we’ve got a rat soemwhere in the roof space or wall between ours and next door’s – can’t see any evidence but my wife thinks she spotted a tail and we’ve sporadically heard scratching.

I’ve put a humane trap down – this one – and baited it with peanut butter.

It’s a very sensitive trap, as evidenced by it trapping my hand when setting it, but despite the bait going and mouse poo being left as a swap, it’s not triggering for the featherlite, Tom Cruise, Mission Impossible mouse. More importantly, it’s not catching the suspected rat.

Any ideas?

Use a proper, lethal rat trap.

It’s the only way to be sure….

Live catch mouse trap…?

Humane? With peanut butter? What if the rats have a nut allergy!?

You people are monsters.

A) if there’s clear evidence of mice, why do think rat?
B) humane is all well and good till you catch something…
C) right bait for the right things, sweet for mice fatty savoury for rats (bacon rinds are good)

WTF are you planning on doing with a live rat?

Best bet is a proper back breaker trap (as said above) tethered to something solid just in case.

Rats and mice do not tend to co-habit so evidence of mice (if fresh) could be a sign you don’t have rats. Obviously each has an appropriately sized trap.

You usually do not get just one, and two of either can become a lot of either very quickly.

We had both in our house, mice in loft and rats under floor, and only managed to control it by killing as many of the sods as possible using both traps and multiple types of poison (rat poison slow to kill mice according to the experts – they didn’t charge us any extra btw so not in their interests to mislead, but we ended up with a block that had two types of poison as well as grain bait for mice).

Any ideas?

Mice can be quite noisy, but if you want some certainty, a small motion-triggered cam will tell you what’s pottering about. You don’t really want mice either though, so I’d be killing those too as well as trying to work out how they’re accessing the house and blocking off any routes.

I’ve got a similar problem. I thought I had a mouse, until I put down a mousetrap (a proper snappy one) then found it the next day set off, moved, bait removed and free of vermin – but next to it was a suspiciously large dropping. So I put down a proper big rat trap and I’ve neither seen nor heard anything for 2 weeks. Did said rat just decide to bugger off?!